When I returned to the tourist office the woman said she had booked me into a hotel called the Pelican, for four nights. After that I’d have the option of extending my stay by three nights at a time. “I’ll be honest,” she said, “it’s not the best hotel around, but the staff are friendly and it hasn’t got a noisy bar or anything.”
I obviously gave the impression of someone who didn’t want to spend time in a noisy bar. She was more a girl than a woman. I must have looked like an old man to her.
I asked for a street map of the town. She gave me a brochure, divided into “what to do and see” and “where to eat, drink and shop” sections, that folded out into a reasonably detailed map. I made sure it extended as far as Sheildston. “Can you walk to Sheildston?” I asked.
She looked surprised. “You can,” she said.
“Good.”
“It’s more fun down here.”
I almost laughed at the conviction with which she said this. It seemed a strange remark after what she’d said about the hotel. Perhaps it was part of her job to stress the fun element of Turner’s Strand.
“I’m not really here for fun,” I said.
“Business, is it?”
“Pretty much.”
“That’s all right, then. It’s just, they can be a bit snooty in Sheildston.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said. “Thank you for all your help.”
“No worries,” she said. She followed me to the door and locked it behind me.
The Pelican was a short walk away, in a quiet street set back from the main downtown district. The building was old enough to need work but not so old that its shabbiness had charm. I signed in. The young man behind the reception desk said, “If you’re going out, best take your room key with you. There isn’t somebody here all the time. The front door’s always open though.” I said I wouldn’t be going out again that evening. I climbed two flights of stairs and felt the energy draining from me with each step. I’d been lying on the bed trying to cool down ever since.
On one TV channel there was a documentary, which seemed to be about anarchism or anti-capitalism or revolution but I couldn’t hear the voice-over clearly and the picture was poor. I hovered on the edge of sleep, but the twitchiness in my legs kept bringing me back. I tried to focus on the screen. Masked protestors in a city I didn’t recognise surged against riot police who looked like Chinese terracotta warriors. A car was rocked and overturned, the word SCUM in red paint dribbled down the cracked window of a department store. A bloody-headed boy was dragged off by a group of angry policemen. You poor kid, I thought, you have no idea what you are up against, the sheer weight and immovability of it. I switched channels to a chat show, a game show, a chef race. A news update briefly mentioned the threat of bush fires again, but spent more time reporting a big lottery win for a couple in Wollongong. The ticket belonged to their dog, apparently. Television was the same the world over, utter trash only with different commercials. I killed the TV and let the remote drop on the sheet beside me.
In the morning, before it grew too hot, I would go looking for Parroulet’s house.
2
DID NOT WAKE UNTIL NINE O’CLOCK. ANNOYED, I GOT up at once and stood under the rickety shower. Searching for my razor, I realised I must have left it in the hotel in Sydney. Further irritated, I dried myself and put on clean clothes. A vague memory came of having been briefly disturbed by drunken exchanges outside my door during the night, but generally, and despite my edginess, I felt as if I’d slept better than I had for years. I went downstairs and ate breakfast—the universal self-service fare of budget hotels: cereals and fruit juices, processed bread, processed ham and cheese, jam impregnated with fruity flavours, undrinkable coffee from a machine. For the rest of my stay, I decided, I would eat elsewhere.
The other guests were mostly young and foreign—backpackers from Brazil, Ireland, Korea, Sweden. I tried to spot the ones nursing hangovers, but probably they were still in bed. I too, I reminded myself, was a foreigner. I did not linger. I collected my sunglasses and the street map from my room, and with the room key in my pocket headed back to the middle of Turner’s Strand, and from there started off for Sheildston.
Whatever excitement there was in Turner’s Strand seemed to be confined to the shopping and seafront zone. The further from the beach you walked, the quieter everything became. The only people I saw were a woman hanging out washing and a man weeding his garden. Had it not been for the different vegetation, the absence of snow and the bone-dry heat, I could almost have imagined myself to be at home. The heat really was intense, and seemed more so away from the sea. I considered turning back to buy a hat, but decided that the longer I delayed the hotter it would get. According to the map it was only three miles to Sheildston. I’d be there in less than an hour.
Beyond the last houses of Turner’s Strand were a couple of hard, dusty football pitches and a barren-looking field, then the road began to climb, and the bush took over. The incline was gentle, but I found it hard work. The flight had taken more out of me than I’d realised. The atmosphere seemed—not heavy, because it was not humid—but thick, like the blast of air from an opened oven door. I began to sweat, and had to use first my handkerchief and then the front of my shirt to wipe my face. I regretted not having gone back for a hat.
The road—it was called Glen Road, and I wondered if John Sheild had been a Scot—turned back on itself often as it worked its way up into the hills, and where it turned it became steep, then levelled out again. I began to dread these turns. My calf muscles ached as I pushed myself round them, and my shirt was now completely drenched. I cursed my stupidity. This was supposed to be a reconnoitring expedition in which I did not draw attention to myself, but the way I was beginning to feel I might have to be taken back to Turner’s Strand in an ambulance.
On one side the ground fell away from the road, and split into rocky gullies, dense with tangled vegetation, which presumably became watercourses when it rained. On the other side eucalyptus trees, and others I did not recognise, stretched to the sky, rising from a similarly thick bed of undergrowth. Grasshoppers kept up their tedious scraping, and there were the sounds, too, of stones or leaves disturbed by birds or insects or perhaps snakes. I knew that Australia had numerous venomous creatures: I kept to the middle of the road. Not a car had passed me in either direction in half an hour.
The trees grew taller and thicker, and occasionally shielded me from the blaze of the sun. The road, though partially striped by shadow, nevertheless beat waves of heat up through the soles of my shoes. I hadn’t seen a house since leaving the town. Could I have taken a wrong turn? I consulted the map. No, there was only one road to and from Sheildston, and I was on it. I kept going. A few minutes later I rounded another bend and the road flattened out completely. I had reached the higher ground above the narrow coastal plain.
I looked back down on Turner’s Strand. Most of it was hidden by the trees, but part of the beach was visible, and the sea beyond it. I’d been wondering why anyone would choose to live up on the hill, and here was one reason: the view was magnificent. The coast with its sandy bays and rocky inlets stretched north and south into the hazy distance, and a vast expanse of glittering turquoise ocean, dotted with sailboats and larger vessels, rolled to the horizon. To look out on that every day—well, you would never tire of it.
And now the houses of Sheildston started to appear. “Discreet and secluded,” “desirable” and “wealthy,” the websites had said, and they were not wrong. The properties were mostly set away from the road, guarded by high walls or fences. Shady drives led from the gates towards half-hidden mansions in pink or white. I glimpsed grass, trimmed hedges, a tennis court, a statue or two. Almost every house, I thought, would have its own pool. From somewhere not too far away I heard children’s cries, the sound of splashing. From another direction came the drone of a mower, the sit-upon kind required for big lawns.
The road meandered between these properties like a tired
, depleted river, and my walk along it was laboured. I had not brought Nilsen’s slip of paper with me. I knew the address by heart, knew the number of the house on Glen Road that was supposedly Parroulet’s, but not all the houses had names or numbers displayed. I went on, and came to what was, or had once been, the village centre. A stone-built church, Presbyterian according to the board outside, was the most prominent building, but it didn’t look as though it saw much use. Close by was another stone building, the old school, which a second noticeboard indicated was now a community hall. One poster warned that door-to-door selling was prohibited. Another advertised a few forthcoming events but when I inspected it I saw that they had all happened months before, if they had happened at all. Half a dozen houses, built mainly of wood and much smaller than the ones I had already passed, stood within a hundred-yard radius of the church, and then the earlier pattern of large, secluded properties resumed. I spotted a number in blue-and-white tiles stuck on a gatepost of one of these, and deduced from it that I would reach the house I was looking for after six more properties. Glen Road continued on its way. And so did I.
I was counting down, and knew it was Parroulet’s place before I saw the number painted on one gatepost, and before I realised that it was the last house on Glen Road. It didn’t look like the other properties. They, from what I could see, were well maintained and cared for. This one was separated from the road by a steel fence and, beyond that, by an expanse of tarmac cracked and swollen by the sun and dotted with tall weeds. The white paint on the cast-iron gates was peeling. Attached to the other gatepost was a mailbox with a couple of flyers hanging from its mouth, and next to it an electric buzzer and a small loudspeaker. These things had been stuck on with no aesthetic consideration. There was no sign of a vehicle, nothing left lying outside to indicate that anyone was at home. I thought I was probably looking at the back of the building. It looked as if it might not be occupied.
Nevertheless, I had arrived.
I walked as far as I could along the perimeter. Shrubs and bushes behind the high steel fence obscured most of my view whenever I stopped to peer in. At a little distance from the house I could make out another building, a garage in all likelihood. After another fifty yards the road ended at a dusty turning-area. A thin hiking track disappeared into the bush, which stretched beyond to the horizon. A permanent metal sign next to it bore the words TOTAL FIRE BAN—NO FIRES, and its arrow was pointed to the red EXTREME position. I wondered if it ever indicated any other level of risk, and who was responsible for moving the arrow.
There was no shade at all in the turning-area. The sun was pitiless. I retraced my footsteps, pausing whenever an overhanging branch provided a little relief. When I reached the gates I looked again for any sign of occupation. Well, I thought, I am here now, and I pressed the buzzer.
No response. I pressed again. Nothing. The gatepost was made of some composite material meant to resemble marble. I lowered myself to the ground, put my back against the post and closed my eyes. I knew this wasn’t sensible, but I needed to think, and I needed to rest for a minute before the walk back to Turner’s Strand. At least I would be going downhill.
I must have dozed for a few moments. A voice—hard, Australian, male—cut through a drowsy confusion of thoughts in my brain.
“You needn’t bother nodding off,” it said. “And you needn’t think you can hang around here any longer either.”
I opened my eyes. My sunglasses seemed hardly to darken the day at all. My head ached. I struggled to my feet.
The man who had spoken was wearing khaki shorts, white socks to his knees, sandals and a Tooheys Beer T-shirt over his big chest. He had a small pair of binoculars hanging round his neck, a wide-brimmed hat on his head and a red, angry face.
“Don’t think I haven’t been watching you snooping around. What’s your game?”
I had no idea where the man had come from. His clothes were clean and well pressed, as if he’d just put them on. I was conscious of my own dishevelled, unshaven, dirty and probably disreputable appearance.
“My game?”
“Yeah, what are you up to? I’ve had my eye on you for a while.”
“I’m not up to anything. I’m trying to make contact with the person who lives here.”
“Make contact? What do you mean, ‘make contact’?” He made it sound like the prelude to a criminal act.
“I’ve come to visit.”
“Well, it looks like you came on the wrong day, mister.”
“I’m trying to speak to the occupant.”
“We’re all owners here.”
“Owner, then.”
“Well, nobody wants to speak to you, do they? I saw you ringing the bell. I’ve been watching you.”
His tone was unrelentingly aggressive. I said, “Do you know him? Do you know who lives here?”
The man’s rage notched up a tone. “Don’t you? You said ‘visit.’ Are you selling something? Is that what’s going on, you’re selling something? There’s a sign back along the way, maybe you didn’t see it, it says ‘no hawkers or canvassers.’ That applies here. So you can move on.”
“If I was selling,” I said, “don’t you think I’d have a case of samples with me? Or leaflets or something? Don’t you think I’d have been at your door too?”
This seemed only to infuriate the man more.
“So what is your game, then, snooping around for no good reason? Eh?”
“I already explained. I’m trying to speak to the owner of this house. Do you know who lives here?”
“One of my neighbours lives here,” the man said. He leaned in close, inhaling noisily through his nostrils as if trying to sniff out my “game.” “But that’s as much as you need to know. We like our privacy round here and, you know what, we mind our own business. So you can ask as many questions as you like and the only answer you’ll get from me is ‘Move on.’ You understand me? Move on. Or do you want me to get the police to move you on?”
He produced a mobile phone, held it threateningly, returned it to his shorts pocket. Folding his arms he took up a stance that suggested he could wait all day until either I got the message or a patrol car rolled up.
“All right,” I said. I couldn’t hang around indefinitely. It was far too hot, and the last thing I wanted was the attention of the local police. “All right, I’m going. But I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Loitering,” the man said. “That’s what you’re doing.”
He stood in the middle of the road, chest projecting, with a satisfied sneer on his face. “You should get out more,” I said, and started off, back towards Turner’s Strand. If the oaf told Parroulet someone had been looking for him, that would be the end of it. But I doubted this would happen. For one thing, it didn’t appear that Parroulet was at home. For another, even if he was I couldn’t imagine there would be much communication between a man like that and a man like Parroulet.
“And don’t come back,” was the man’s parting shot, and when I turned he tapped his binoculars significantly. “We like our privacy here.”
Perhaps they did, but I hadn’t come all that way to be thwarted by a big ugly brute like him.
3
FTER I’D STRUGGLED BACK TO THE PELICAN HOTEL I collapsed for a few hours. When I came to, my head was less sore, but I felt slightly nauseous. I showered again, changed my clothes and ventured out to buy a hat and a razor. I needed to refresh my wardrobe too. In this weather, some shorts, some loose, light shirts and a pair of deck shoes were called for. I’d known when I packed my case that what I was taking would be neither appropriate nor adequate. At the time this had seemed a trivial matter, but not now.
I decided I did not much care for Turner’s Strand, or at least not for “the Strand,” which the brochure informed me was the informal name for the seafront area. The principal street was a jumble of fast-food outlets, minimarkets, ice-cream stalls, cafés, and shops bursting with beach umbrellas, snorkels, flippers, frisbees, Boogie Boards, buckets,
spades and brightly coloured balls. The smell of cheap, hot fat was in the air. Along the seafront were more expensive boutiques, some restaurants, a gallery or two. The order of the day, it really did appear, was to have fun. Everybody was stripped down or dressed up for it. I found a shop that sold a few relatively sober-looking men’s clothes, and got what I needed, including a hat not unlike that worn by the bully of Sheildston. I was probably highly conspicuous, a middle-aged man on his own, not here to have fun. That said, nobody seemed to pay me the slightest attention.
I bought a newspaper and sat at a café table under a sunshade, and a girl who could have been the sister or best friend of the girl in the tourist office brought me a sandwich and a beer. The other customers, all in couples or groups, were laughing and chatting but nothing I heard them say was of any importance. I looked at the paper. It was a different title from the one I’d seen the day before, but it carried a similar front-page story about the threat of bush fires. A major fire had broken out near a town twenty miles to the north, and was believed to have been started deliberately. Fire crews had fought it through the night and brought it under control, but there were worries about a westerly breeze getting up, which would drive any flames towards more populated areas. As if to emphasise the point, a sudden gust came out of nowhere and almost blew the paper, and my beer with it, off the table.
I couldn’t see anybody else reading a newspaper. Everybody but me was here for fun. News was not fun. Bush fires were not fun. Here by the beach, with its perfect curve of white sand washed by the brilliant blue ocean, it was hard to imagine any danger, any sudden or utter destruction. I’d read in an in-flight magazine between Singapore and Sydney that the average Australian life expectancy was one of the highest in the world. You lived a long time, you had fun, as much of it as you could get, you died. I watched the other people. I did not want their lives to be shallow and inconsequential. I had no right to presume that they were. I wished them well. And yet I could not help thinking about the question Nilsen had asked that had so angered me: were you even alive before the bomb went off?
The Professor of Truth Page 16